5/11/11
Comment of the Week: How to Spot Dating-Site Spam on Craigslist

Steven, commenting on the post “Dating on Craigslist Is a Crap Shoot

CL is Crap. Period.

Folks, 99% of what you read in [their] personal sections–including under ‘Platonic’–is spam from dating site affiliates.  And here’s the way to spot them:

1) No contractions or contractions without apostrophes, e.g., ‘I am,’ or ‘Im,’ etc.
2) No capitalization, e.g., ‘im,’ ‘well, this is…,’ etc.
3) Text whose margins end about midway across the page
4) Text that begins, “never done this…” “New to this…”, etc.
5) Text that reads like broken English
6) Photos that are a) blurry; b) show a person who’s in their 30s or 40s but who claims to be in their early 20s; c) nudes
7) Posts in which the age is different than what’s mentioned in the text…

Craig and his list are not like newspaper classsifieds in that there is no way to police who posts to it. Most of what you see here and even a considerable amount of what is posted elsewhere on these websites are frauds.

Be advised.



2 Comments

  1. ^ Are you a dude, Alex? Cause gay dudes can totally hook up on craigslist. It’s just a scam for straight people.

    Don’t get me wrong, I know straight people who have hooked up on craigslist. But it’s extreeeeeeemely rare. Most “women” on craigslist, if they’re human at all, are actually gay dudes collecting cock shots from desperate straight guys dumb enough to send them out.

    “A hot 19 year old college girl who loves casual sex!? Hell yeah she can have a pic of me naked!”

  2. I soooo disagree. I met my boyfriend on CL, through the personals section. Next week we celebrate three years together and we’re planning on getting married. Before I met him, I went on a number of dates and casual encounters with people I met on CL, and while most were certainly not the cream of the crop, they were as real as you and me. I never contacted someone who turned out to be a scam. And other than each other, between the two of us my boyfriend and I landed two jobs, three cars and two apartments.

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